The present invention relates to automatic alignment and actuating apparatus for business machines of the type capable of printing both numerical and symbol information onto a document for subsequent handling by automatic character recognition equipment.
Banking documents of the type with which the present invention is most useful are usually encoded along the lower bottom edge portion in the so-called clear band area of the document, e.g. check, with magnetic ink character recognition (MICR) numbers and symbols in accordance with the requirements of the American Banking Association. On a check, for example, the numbers and symbols are or may be placed in four different locations called "fields" along the aforementioned clear band. These four fields are designated (auxiliary "on-us"), (transit number), (on-us) and (amount). The first three fields are usually preprinted when the checks are supplied to a customer with the amount field being filled in during a posting operation.
Many times a check will enter the automatic sorting and handling apparatus without the MICR encoding. These checks, which are commonly referred to as "exception items", must then be processed so that they will flow through the automatic equipment with a minimum amount of handling and expense.
Another source of such exception items are new checking accounts. When a checking account is opened, the band ordinarily provides 5 or 10 checks for use until the customer receives a supply of personalized pre-encoded checks. Each time the customer uses one of these temporary checks, it must be handled as an exception item by the bank. The bank must encode each of the checks with automatic MICR numbers and symbols to enable the checks to be processed automatically. Ordinarily the banks suffer this expense for the goodwill of the customer, however, these checks present an expensive and time consuming handling problem.
The present application is related to U.S. Pat. No. 3,712,211, entitled "Alignment Means for a Bed and Platen Printing Machine", filed Oct. 30, 1970, Ser. No. 85,445 issued Jan. 23, 1973, in the name of Paul J. Thut.